Sales have fallen 40 percent at La Casona, a Central Falls restaurant owned by the Tabares family. Cristian, his mother, Doña Gloria, and father, Pedro Antonio( at center right) moved to the city from Medellín, Colombia, in 2001.
“ the best place in Rhode Island: fresh food, safe, respect and interesting people.”
After decades of decline, Broad Street is noisy with the construction of a forty-six-unit affordable apartment building next to City Hall, and the revival of the historic DeNevers building as El Centro, the city’ s first community center in fourteen years. Central Falls opened a new high school, and plans are underway to build a new dual-language pre-K – 8 school. Once pockmarked with vacant storefronts, Broad Street is now anchored by stalwarts like Tony’ s and newer businesses, like Mimi and Pop’ s Ice Cream Shop.
Rivera says that the state’ s smallest city with the highest poverty rates has been able to leverage an annual $ 21 million budget into progress, in part, by forming partnerships with nonprofits and state agencies. But Central Falls really runs on immigrant grit.
“ If it were not for the immigrants, Central Falls would not be what it is right now. They built this community, and everywhere you look,” she says,“ almost every business on this street is run and owned by immigrants.”
In 1910, the foreign-born and their American children comprised 70 percent of Rhode Island’ s population— more than double the national average. They were French Canadians and Europeans mostly from Ireland, England and Italy who poured in beginning in 1876 to power the Industrial Revolution. The need for their labor did not ease their reception, says
University of Rhode Island Professor Emeritus Scott Molloy. The established unions, which viewed immigrants as unskilled competitors, did not want them. The larger society greeted these newcomers with fear, disdain and extreme rhetoric. Today’ s social media memes of“ Haitians eat dogs” are yesterday’ s editorials declaring that the Irish spread disease. Immigrants eventually formed their own unions. A toehold became a foothold. Upward mobility and political influence followed.
Nearly 17 percent of Rhode Island’ s labor force, and 20 percent of its entrepreneurs, are immigrants, according to the EPI. The growth in the immigrant population helped Rhode Island retain its second congressional seat in 2017. In the last five years, international migration has kept the state’ s count above 1 million residents. A January U. S. Census Bureau analysis shows that about 31,000 people moved here since 2020, boosting the population by 1.6 percent. But Trump’ s immigration actions are causing a sharp decline, as evidenced by Census numbers, and Rajab, of the Rhode Island Hospitality Association, worries about what will happen when the state falls off the next generational cliff.
“ In 2030, deaths will surpass births in the U. S. and by 2050, deaths will surpass births and current immigration,” he says.“ If we lose population, the economy will shrink. We are heading in the wrong direction.”
Central Falls is the current equivalent of Rhode Island’ s 1910 high-water mark, with 44 percent of its population foreign born,
84 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I JULY 2026